You pull the crisper drawer and find a puddle — or a skating rink of sheet ice under the bins that reforms every week no matter how often you mop it. On LG French-door and bottom-freezer models this is one of the most predictable faults we see, and it has almost nothing to do with your water line.
Where the water actually comes from
Several times a day your fridge melts the frost off its evaporator coil — that's the defrost cycle — and the meltwater runs down a small drain to an evaporation pan by the compressor. The drain path includes a narrow tube and, on many LGs, a small rubber check fitting at the bottom. Let dust, food film and biofilm build up in that path and the meltwater has nowhere to go: it overflows the drain trough, runs down inside the back wall, and pools in the lowest point of the cabinet — right under your crispers. In the freezer section the same failure shows up as a slab of ice across the floor.
Why the "hair dryer fix" doesn't stick
Thawing the visible ice treats the symptom for a week or two. The clog is deeper: down the drain tube, at the check fitting, or where the tube ages and stiffens. A proper repair means opening the rear interior panel, clearing and flushing the entire drain path with warm water until it flows into the pan, cleaning the trough, and on models prone to re-freezing, making sure the drain-area heat path is intact so the passage doesn't ice shut at its mouth. Done that way, the fix lasts years, not days.
The look-alike leaks worth ruling out
Not every puddle is the drain. Water at the front of the fridge or dripping inside the door area points at the water filter head or a dispenser line; water on the kitchen floor behind the unit implicates the inlet valve or the saddle connection on the house line. Part of a leak call is simply tracing the water uphill honestly — gravity doesn't lie, but it does mislead.
The Pacific Northwest footnote
Our homes run humid much of the year, and more humidity means more frost on the coil and more meltwater per defrost — which is why a marginal drain that would limp along in Arizona floods a crisper in Everett. It's also why we check door gaskets on every drain call: a tired gasket feeds the coil extra moisture and keeps the whole cycle overworked.
The visit
A drain clearing on an LG is a tidy, same-visit job with a fixed quote — and it usually ends with us showing you the gunk that caused it, which is equal parts satisfying and disgusting. Bring your own commentary; we've heard it all.
